Parental Financial Assistance and Young Adults' Relationships With Parents and Well‐being

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12029
• Published date: 01 June 2013
• Author: Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson
• Date: 01 June 2013

MONICA KIRKPATRICK JOHNSON Washington State University

Parental Financial Assistance and Young Adults’

Relationships With Parents and Well-being

Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal

Study of Adolescent Health, this study examined

the impact of parental f‌inancial assistance on

young adults’ relationships with parents and

well-being. Conditional change models were

estimated to evaluate the effects of parental

f‌inancial assistance reported in Wave 3 (ages

18 – 28) and Wave 4 (ages 24 – 34) of the

study. The results (Ns ranged from 9,128

to 13,389 across outcomes) indicated that

f‌inancial assistance was positively associated

with changes in depressive symptoms and

closeness to both mothers and fathers in both

periods. Changes in self-esteem were less

robustly linked to parental f‌inancial assistance.

Although the observed pattern with respect

to parent – child relations held regardless of

the progress young people had made in the

transition to adulthood, the effects for well-

being, which were also relatively small in

magnitude, did not. In particular, changes in

depressive symptoms associated with f‌inancial

assistance were concentrated among individuals

occupying adult social roles.

The transition to adulthood is elongating and

diversifying, with old models of movement

from school to work less viable in the new

Department of Sociology, Washington State University,

P.O. Box 644020, Pullman, WA 99164 – 4020

(monicakj@wsu.edu).

Key Words: f‌inancial assistance, parent – child relation-

ships, transition to adulthood, well-being.

economy. With more young people pursuing

higher education and for longer periods of time

(Fitzpatrick & Turner, 2007) and with wages for

those without a college or university degree

eroding (Lemieux, 2006), young people are

taking longer to achieve f‌inancial independence

(Danzinger & Ratner, 2010). Young people are

now more frequently in a semidependent state

for a number of years as they invest in higher

education, job training, or struggle to make ends

meet in poorly paying jobs. In this context,

parents are often providing signif‌icant practical

and f‌inancial assistance well past their children’s

18th birthday (Schoeni & Ross, 2005; Settersten

& Ray, 2010).

Financial assistance from parents fosters

higher educational attainment, reduces col-

lege dropout, and facilitates movement into

career-related work (Johnson & Benson,

2012; Public Agenda, 2010). Young adults’

living standards are improved through parental

f‌inancial investments toward education and

home buying (Semyonov & Lewin-Epstein,

2001). As such, f‌inancial support during young

adulthood is now recognized as an important

mechanism in the intergenerational transmis-

sion of socioeconomic status (SES; Fingerman,

Cheng, Tighe, Birditt, & Zarit, 2012; Henretta,

Wolf, Van Voorhis, & Soldo, 2012; Settersten

& Ray, 2010; Swartz, 2008).

While evidence mounts that f‌inancial support

shapes attainment, much less is known about

the effects of this extension of support on other

aspects of young adults’ lives. Does it bolster

young adults’ socioemotional health during a

major transition period, softening or eliminating

Journal of Marriage and Family 75 (June 2013): 713 –733 713

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12029

714 Journal of Marriage and Family

the blows to well-being that might stem from

f‌inancial diff‌iculty? Or is it less salutary, if

young adults feel they ought to be able to make

it without parents’ help? For similar reasons, are

emotional ties with parents supported though

these transfers, or are they weakened?

In this study, I drew from multiple

waves of the National Longitudinal Study of

Adolescent Health (Add Health; see http://

www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth) to exam-

ine whether f‌inancial support during young

adulthood affects parent – child relationships as

well as young adults’ well-being. I also exam-

ined whether movement into adult social roles

moderates these relationships. Although there is

evidence that the prevalence of parental sup-

port varies according to whether or not their

offspring have taken on adult roles (e.g., left

school, marriage, etc.), signaling progress in

the transition to adulthood (Fingerman, Miller,

Birditt, & Zarit, 2009; Siennick, 2011; Swartz,

2009; Swartz, Kim, Uno, Mortimer, & O’Brien,

2011), little is known about whether the conse-

quences of parental support vary by the young

adult’s progress in the transition to adulthood.

THE CHANGING TRANSITION TO ADULTHOOD

Demographers tracking role transitions, includ-

ing school exit, home leaving, employment,

marriage, and childbearing, have documented

both an elongation of and diversif‌ication in the

transition to adulthood in advanced industrial-

ized nations, including the United States (Fussell

& Gauthier, 2005). Young people are staying in

school longer, delaying family formation, and

staying in the parental home longer, moving

back the age at which they have ‘‘accomplished’’

these adult transitions. Their transition patterns

also demonstrate greater variability, with fewer

following dominant pathways. Although the

United States does not have the most prolonged

transition to adulthood (Fussell, Gauthier, &

Evans, 2007), a recent comparison of 19 coun-

tries named the United States as having the most

destandardized transition to adulthood (Elzinga

& Liefbroer, 2007). More young people are

combining higher education with employment,

having children before marriage, returning to

the parental home, and combining roles in other

varied ways, yielding a highly complex pattern

characterizing this period of the life course.

A destandardized transition to adulthood

presents not only new opportunities to young

people but also new risks (Settersten, 2007),

and how successfully young people navigate

this critical period is likely to have lifelong

implications, because the decisions young

people make about education, work, and family

at this time structure later opportunities. Families

are the primary ‘‘scaffolding’’ and ‘‘safety net’’

for young people traversing this new terrain

(Swartz et al., 2011). This is particularly true

in nations with weaker social safety nets, such

as the United States (Newman, 2012; Settersten,

2007). Parents have long supported their children

until they reach key milestones of adulthood,

Swartz (2009) argued, and they continue to do

so even as these milestones occur at later ages.

This support takes a variety of forms, including

the provision of housing, child care, help with

tuition and living expenses, as well as emotional

support and advice (Fingerman, Cheng, Tighe,

et al., 2012; Swartz, 2009).

INTERGENERATIONAL EXCHANGE AND

SUPPORT

Intergenerational exchange of practical and

material support in the United States is not an

ongoing, consistent, feature of families; instead,

it occurs during specif‌ic periods of the life course

(e.g., young adulthood, old age) or as the need

arises (e.g., divorce, ill health, job loss; Swartz,

2009). Exchange of support generally follows

norms of reciprocity, but usually reciprocity

is considered over the long term, and it often

involves different types of support (e.g., f‌inancial

support to offspring and physical care to older

parents; Silverstein, 2006; Swartz, 2009). Within

an exchange framework, parents may provide

support to their adult children in anticipation of

receiving support back from those children when

they need it. Indeed, offspring who have received

more assistance during young adulthood have

been shown to provide more support to older

parents later (Henretta, Hill, Li, Soldo, & Wolf,

1997; Silverstein, Conroy, Wang, Gairrusso, &

Bengtson, 2002). Parents may also invest in

their young adult children’s success because

successful adult children give more support to

parents (Fingerman et al., 2009; Fingerman,

Cheng, Birditt, & Zarit, 2012).

But assistance to adult children is likely

motivated by more than an expectation of recip-

rocated support. According to the developmental

stake perspective, parents are invested in how

their children do in life as a part of their